CamStudio is a free software download for Windows-based PC's that allows users to record screen and audio from their PC and create video files (a screencast). Other options allow for adding captions and picture-in-picture to recordings. There is a complete FAQ section, and find a comprehensive 13-minute video tutorial with instructions for downloading all the way through to recording, located here. This video resides on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable. You could always view the video at home and bring it to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the video from YouTube.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use CamStudio to record instructions for using websites. Share how to perform problems, step by step directions for any project, and much more. Leave a video message for a substitute teacher or even the class! Create a video message to share with parents about current projects, clips from field trips, and more. Share on your class website for students to view at home. Allow students to record a video sharing their favorite websites or tips for solving math problems.

Hypothesis is an easy to use tool for annotating, collaborating, and sharing web content. Add any URL to the search bar on the home page to begin using Hypothesis after creating your account. Create an annotation by highlighting text; the pop-up allows you to add notes including hyperlinks and tags to your annotation. Add notes or highlights using tools on the site. Save your notes for public viewing or just for your use. Invite others to view your notes or collaborate using the sharing link with your personal URL or with social media links. Click the Education tab on the top menu to see examples of classroom use, 10 Ways to Annotate With Students, Creating a Private Group, and more.

In the Classroom

Use Hypothesis as part of your flipped classroom. Annotate and share web resources with students and ask them to contribute notes and additional information. Ask ESL/ELL and resource students to write text to explain concepts by rewording, or to ask questions about the parts they do not understand. Add questions to math explanations, highlight landforms, or discuss information on maps. Share with students for use when collaborating on research projects. Install the Hypothesis bookmark on classroom computers for use at any time.

FreshGrade is more than a classroom management system; it also creates eportfolios for all students. Easily capture, provide feedback, and share student work with this tool. Use FreshGrade to post lessons, assignments, and due dates. Keep track of grades and allow students to contribute video, audio, images, and comments to their eportfolios. Easily share with parents who can also comment. Create an account using your email and start setting up your classes. Click the drop-down arrow next to your name for support. The support is extensive: find a Quick Start Guide, Walkthrough Video, comprehensive Product Guide, FAQ's, Knowledge Base, and a Video Library. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as Freemake Video Converter, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Use FreshGrade to manage and organize any classroom. Maintain a classroom calendar so students can easily find due dates and deadlines for homework and projects. Share information with parents to keep them up to date. Even if your school or district already has a learning management system for tracking grades, use FreshGrade for the student portfolios and easy parent inclusion. Record classroom activities and student learning with photos or videos using your mobile device. Show students how to document their learning and make comments in their portfolio. Share portfolios with parents, not just at conference time, but any time the student portfolio is updated to keep parents in the loop. Share student accounts with other teachers they may have.

Docs.com is Microsoft's file sharing service and part of their Office Suite of tools. Consider it your online showroom for Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF's, and PowerPoint and Sway presentations. When you first sign in (with email), you will be prompted to create an "About" page that can serve as your online resume or portfolio. However, you can do this later. Jump right in and upload files from your computer, One Drive, or Sway. Before saving, use options to customize visibility and allow comments and downloads from viewers. Create collections using your uploaded documents or documents found through sharing. The journal feature uses Sway to set up and share online journals. Share content using social networking links or copy and paste the link to your document or collection. Docs.com is no longer allowing signups and will be discontinued on December 15th.

In the Classroom

Take advantage of the many features of Docs.com to organize and manage documents by teaching units. Build and share collections with students for use at home. Have students develop and curate collections for class projects. Collaborate with peers by creating collections for different teaching units or professional development activities.

Airtable is an online database for collaboration incorporating many different online platforms. Attach files from services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote to share. Collaborators can view the change history, link data, and engage in chat. Free templates offer options for creating study guides, book lists, and more. Free accounts offer unlimited databases with storage of up to 1200 records each and a 2GB attachment limit.

In the Classroom

Use Airtable to collaborate on lessons with other teachers, both local and across the world. Share with students to use when collaborating on projects or to create study guides. Use the provided templates to catalog your books or share study guides with students.

Create and share custom online event invitations using Splash. Choose from the many templates to design and add information, RSVP questions, confirmations, and event settings. Splash even automatically creates a custom hashtag for use with your event. Be sure to follow the tutorials to get a good overview of Splash's capabilities.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

The possibilities for using Splash seem endless. Use this for planning parties, bringing in materials for projects, and any other activity that requires coordination. If you have limited technology availability, this is a great way for teachers or students to sign up for time slots to use laptops, iPads, cameras, or a podcast recording station. Go paperless with signups! Organize your parent/teacher conferences. Plan student research of class projects using this resource. Help students build organizational skills by having them "plan" a mythical (or actual) event such as a museum opening for their Famous Americans exhibit. Use this tool for any middle or high school club, career day, or sports team to organize their own events. Share with your school's parent organization to help them plan the next school event.

Prism is a tool for "crowdsourcing interpretation" of text. Create your own Prism or browse through Prisms available on the site. To create a Prism, add text and choose options for highlighting such as red for demonstrating foreshadowing or blue for feminism. Before finishing, add the title and author and include credit for the work using their drop-down tool providing options. Watch the introductory video, which resides on YouTube, for a full overview of how to create and use Prism. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable. You could always view the video at home and bring it to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the video from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Use Prism to explore text collaboratively with your students. Paste in portions of any text and have students highlight indicated features or ask them to highlight areas of confusion. Students will need a Prism account; however, their work is anonymous when added to Prisms. Use the completed Prisms to assess student understanding and as a springboard for classroom discussions. Use across the curriculum to highlight and interpret texts in all subjects. Create Prisms for newspaper articles from different sources, have students highlight factual information, then compare and contrast information found using an online tool such as Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram, reviewed here. If students cannot have their own email accounts, consider using a "class set" of Gmail subaccounts, explained here; this tells how to set up Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Using Gmail subaccounts will provide anonymous interaction within your class.

Carrd is a simple to use, one-page website creator. Think of it as similar to an online business card. Begin by choosing from available templates or start with a blank page. A quick page of instructions provides an overview of tools available to use, including adding images, links to social media accounts, tables, and more. When complete, save and publish to your unique carrd.co URL. Please check out the templates and published wording used. It may be inappropriate for your students.

In the Classroom

Use this site for students to post simple projects such as stories, poems, and art projects. For easy access, collect a master list of links to student pages on your classroom website, wiki, blog, or create an interactive Google doc or form for collecting these. If students are creating pages, be sure to check with your district's policy on publishing student work. Each website created has a private URL. Students can use this tool at home for presentations and email you the URL for their completed work. Compile the presentation URLs on your class blog or wiki, or a Google doc so all students have access. Integrate all subjects into Carrd. The simplicity of this site would make it an easy tool for younger students to create eportfolios with links to and explanations of their various projects located elsewhere on the web.

Create a poster (meme), postcard, or add captions to a photo. Also, resize and crop images. Save in medium or best quality to your device or download as a PDF or Word doc easily with Picfont. No registration is required. Choose images from your computer or device or select a picture from the gallery. Change not just the color and size of the font, but add an outline in any color and size, place it anywhere on the photo, and many more effects. Use Picfont to spice up social media postings; select to create a Facebook header, and a post with photos, a Twitter header and an In-stream, an Instagram Post, a LinkedIn cover, or select from several ad sizes. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click features for directions about how to use the different features of Picfont.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this easy tool to add captions to images, create memes, or posters for your bulletin boards. Use this easy tool with students during back to school time as a way for them to get to know each other. Have students upload a picture of themselves doing their favorite activity and label it with amusing text or a favorite quote (or song lyrics?). Have them upload images that represent their interests and character traits. Print the images with text for a back-to-school bulletin board. Use after a field trip for students to write captions on the photos they took. Be sure to share the photos on your class web page, blog, or wiki. Haven't started blogging yet? Check out TeachersFirst's Blog Basics. For other uses, have students practice new words in a world language class by labeling and identifying images in that language. Create writing prompts using several annotated images. Have students create annotated images to explain key terms in science class. In ELA class, make homophone or vocabulary images to show the correct word along with a picture that explains it.

Wordie is a free vocabulary tool for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers; however, it is also a handy tool for all teachers. Begin by typing or pasting in text in the provided box. Use up to 1500 characters without registering. Register for free using your email to use unlimited characters. Choose the reading level you want to assign to the text, then click submit. Wordie analyzes the text and provides two boxes with word banks. The first includes vocabulary applicable to the reading level you input, the second displays words above that level. Uncheck any boxes next to words you prefer not to include as vocabulary. Use the Print Preview to create a printable, including the entire text with vocabulary to learn in a featured word box.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this site as a useful tool for teaching vocabulary from any text. Copy portions of literature into Wordie to identify and create vocabulary lists for students. Differentiate for student abilities based on reading levels. Use Wordie to develop student writing skills. Ask them to copy their writing into Wordie and run the analysis at a reading level you prefer. If there isn't enough new vocabulary words, challenge students to rewrite in a way that reaches a higher reading level. Use Wordie with ESL/ELL learners to point out difficult vocabulary in reading passages before reading.

ScreenShot is free online image editing service. Upload an image from your computer, then use the tools and filters to adjust the photograph as desired. ScreenShot contains basic photo imaging tools for at-home users, as well as more advanced tools for more seasoned photo editors. Choose from many different effects to make your images unique. When finished editing, view the image at the URL provided, download, or share using social networking links.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this tool anytime you need to edit photos for use on class blogs, wikis, or in presentation tools. In primary grades, this tool can be useful for teachers to use to edit pictures from a field trip, science experiments, and more. Share the editing process with younger students using an interactive whiteboard or projector. Edit together! Encourage older students to use this site themselves on images for projects or presentations. Use this tool in photography or art classes. Use the editor to edit pictures to fit styles of pictures when doing historical reports or to set a mood. Use text options for the photos themselves to tell the stories. Have students annotate or label Creative Commons online images of cells, structures of an animal, and much more.

Ribbet is an online photo editing and sharing site that doesn't require sign-up, download, or installation. Follow prompts to upload images, then use Ribbet's editing tools to crop, resize, and fine tune the photo. Liven-up images with stickers, filters, or create collages and more with Ribbet's additional photo tools. When finished, download the picture to your computer or share to Facebook and photo storage sites using the links provided. Free registration allows users to save images and editing history to Ribbet.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use Ribbet anytime photos need to be edited on class blogs, wikis, or sites. Encourage older students to use this tool themselves on images for projects or presentations. Use Ribbet to edit pictures to look "old" when doing historical reports or to set a mood. In primary grades, use this tool to edit pictures from a field trip, science experiments, and more. Share the editing process with younger students using an interactive whiteboard or projector, and edit the project together!

Share stories using digital images and Microsoft Photo Story 3 software. Download the software onto your Windows operating system to begin. With Photo Story 3 you can edit images, add effects, soundtracks, and narrate your story. When finished, the small file size allows for easy sharing and viewing.
Although Photo Story 3 is an excellent and useful program, there are several things users need to consider. Photo Story is only compatible with Windows XP operating systems and higher, not on Macs. Windows has not issued updates for the program in several years and has not released a similar product since that time. Consider using similar resources such as Animoto reviewed here or Stupeflix reviewed here as alternative options if needed.

In the Classroom

Photo Story 3 is an excellent way for students to create and share things that they photograph. Challenge students to give oral reports using Photo Story 3 as the visual part of their presentation. Have students take pictures during field trips to use in a Photo Story 3 to display what they saw and learned. Photograph steps of a science experiment. Alternatively, have students search for Creative Commons and Public Domain images to use as part of a slideshow biography about a prominent person in history. Use to tell the story of the water cycle or another process. Create a Photo Story 3 to use for review of classroom topics. Have students create a Photo Story 3 presentation demonstrating learning in any subject area such as Civil War events, different characteristics of animals, etc. Create a slide show for your elementary classroom as part of an informal, sharing presentation. Upload a picture that each student has drawn and have students tell the class about the picture in their own words. What a great way to get young students acclimated to talking in front of a group.

Write down your thoughts in an organized, structured way with Thought Plan. The simplicity of the features allows for easy use with flexible editing for personalized use. Register for an account to begin creating your first Thought Plan. Add a title, then begin creating a list of your main ideas. Share or download to your computer with the provided links. The introductory video resides on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable. You could always view the video at home and bring it to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the video from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Use Thought Plan to plan and organize your yearly schedule. All students will appreciate having an online time management account, but learning support students and disorganized gifted students need one. This is also a great tool for ESL/ELL students to help learn organization skills with very simple features. You may want to model using this online tool to help middle and high school students learn personal organization. Share this site the first week of school to get students started on the right foot! Make a demo account for a mythical student and organize his/her daily schedule together so students can see how it works. Share the steps on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Alternately, this idea will work with group projects where students need to learn to manage their project time.

Edulastic provides free assessment tools to track learning and mastery of Common Core Standards and state standards. The program contains more than 2000 customizable assessments with automatic grading capability. Register to create an account, then begin using the assessment library and adding students to your class using a code, emails, or upload a data sheet. Be sure to take advantage of Edulastic's articles, training, and free webinar videos to learn about all the features included with this program. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Create and use short quizzes to track mastery of concepts by all students in your class. Use this site to pretest gifted students. If the gifted students already know the material, allow them to advance to another topic. The quick feedback allows greater opportunity to focus on students who need additional help. Use Edulastic to monitor your teaching of Common Core Standards as well as focusing on student proficiency of content. Since student registration is via email, for young students consider using a "class set" of Gmail subaccounts, explained here; this tells how to configure Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Using Gmail subaccounts will provide anonymous interaction within your class.

Add stickers, filters, frames, and more to images with this free photo editor, no registration required! Begin by choosing to add a frame or open the photo editor. The editor offers all options available such as adding stickers, choosing frames, and adjusting image qualities. When finished, download your image to your computer or share via social networking links.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Usually taking classroom pictures means editing those in some way, and this online photo editor provides many of the options needed plus a few fun effects. Since no registration is required, students can upload a picture, create effects, and save on their computer. Advise students to use pictures that they have permission to alter. Using their own photos is one way to ensure this. Be sure to check your school's acceptable use policy. Students should be aware of how to upload and then find their creation. Use this service anytime pictures are used for classroom projects, lessons, or activities.

Create and share beautiful digital content with Lucidpress. Start at the Educators link to access your FREE educator account. After registering for a free account, follow the prompts to add a document type from the available templates. Short tutorials along the way help guide you on using available features. The easy drag and drop features allow you to personalize flyers, posters, presentations, and more. The free features allow you to include three pages per document and up to 25mb storage; however, signing up as an educator includes access to many more additional features such as team management and up to 5gb storage for your team. This requires signing up with a school email address.

In the Classroom

Have students collaborate on any kind of document using Lucidpress. Users can view, edit, and comment as they work together. The possible uses are only limited by your imagination! Create your own story page for parents and students where they can stay updated about what is happening in your classroom. Have students create a visual story to accompany books read in class, tell about social studies events, or display images for different science terms. Make flyers for upcoming events, to share book reviews, or as campaign posters for class elections.

Create personalized crossword puzzles to embed on your blog or website with this easy puzzle creator. View the help for the directions and examples. It is as simple as typing a question on each line followed by an asterisk, then the correct answer. When complete, submit to view your puzzle online and choose from different options for sharing. Also, you can download puzzles as PDF documents.

In the Classroom

Create puzzles for any subject or topic for review or introduction to new materials. Allow students to create puzzles for other students to solve. Add a puzzle to the classroom newsletter or blog to create interest. Share puzzles on an interactive whiteboard for students to solve together.

Teachers can create and deliver classroom content online with this free, easy-to-use web application. As a teacher, staying organized can be a challenge. Keep all of your units and lesson plans in one place with Cloudschool. Students can access course content at any time via URL on any device without logging in. After creating an account, design courses with individual lessons using content you select and upload based on school standards. Add lessons, homework, assignments, even embed Google Docs and other content; then "publish" some, or all of the content. Your account is a personal education website called a Teaching Space whose URL you share with others. After logging in, use the Dashboard to navigate and easily manage all your Courses and Lessons. Mark courses with a tag so they will come up for anybody who visits your Teaching Space, or password protect your Lessons. Share with other teachers or students by sending Lessons and Courses via email. Download lessons as Word docs. Students can only interact via class discussions you set up and monitor in the lessons. As a simple learning management system, Cloudschool facilitates delivery of curricular content, and keeps you organized with your lessons and units. Find them easily next year! While free for individuals, there is a charge for institutions.

In the Classroom

Watch the short videos on the landing page to see how Cloudschool works; once signed up, you will have access to the very complete Help section. Within each course, create and distribute text-based or multimedia lessons containing a variety of formats which may be embedded, including audio, video, PDFs, and worksheets. Add discussion questions to all Lessons for students to reply to within your course environment. Use toolbars at the top as main controls for each page for easy navigation and creation. The left-side navigation menu links to Courses, Lessons, Curriculum Lists, and Files. Helpful tips appear by hovering over buttons. Click into a Course to add a new Lesson, then choose a Template, or use the Create New Lesson button. A Plus button at the top center of the page adds text, images, audio, and video to your lesson. Include homework, student discussion, assignments, and assessments which students submit outside of the Cloudschool environment. Notifications are available. After creating lessons, use your Teaching Space to give large or small group in-class presentations. Consider putting a bookmark on classroom computers to the lesson the students are to work on. You could also share the lessons on your class website. Share lesson plans with colleagues and administrators. Cloudschool is useful for any teacher to organize content and deliver it easily to individual students in class or at home as part of blended or flipped classroom environments. No classroom management tools are available since students do not register.

Knowledge Maps provides a resource for community problem solving. Sign up using Gmail or FaceBook. First-time members are asked to choose a map. An introduction wizard will then come up and walk you through how to use Knowledge Maps, or you can decide to skip the intro. Then, start a map by posing a question or problem and invite friends and other community members to recommend resources. After receiving and reviewing resources, share with others as part of the Knowledge Maps community.

In the Classroom

Knowledge Maps is an excellent way to narrow down resources for class projects and research taking away the overwhelming nature of Google searches. Create a Knowledge Map for students to share their favorite website for interpreting literature, finding solutions to math problems, or locating pictures for use in multimedia projects. Ask students to create a Knowledge Map that includes resources used on class projects. Create a Knowledge Map to embed on your class website with suggested books for reading. Use this site professionally to curate and share resources with coworkers. The ideas for using this tool are endless!